On being a girl at the hardware store
So my parents visited this week, from late Saturday night until about an hour ago, and that meant doing lots of projects around the house which in turn meant many trips to the hardware store. At one of these, I had a hilarious experience which I feel I must relate to you, my LiveJournal readers.
As you probably know, I'm not much of a girly girl, but I'm also not butch enough to really know my way around the hardware store1, and I will probably never be able to make myself at home there like my dad does without even thinking about it. But the girliest I've felt in a long time was when my dad turned to a guy in the screws and bolts aisle and asked "Do you work here?" and my first thought on looking at the guy was "Not in those shoes, he doesn't."
I mean, really. Flip-flops?
It was all I could do to avoid thinking my ridiculously girly thought out loud, and I think they might have thrown me out of the store at that point to keep me from being a bad influence on the three-year-old further down the aisle, whose dad was doing a great job of introducing him to the important male bonding experience of the difference between stainless and brass nuts and bolts. What does it say about me that I thought they were really cute, but in an embarrased yet envious kind of way?
- Just to defend my machismo a bit, I'd like to point out that we're talking a hometown True Value here, not one of those well-labeled Home Depot or big-box hardware stores, oh no.